


Gravity

by Hat_Brat



Series: Semper ad Meliora (Always Toward Better Things - a Collection of PMD Stories) [1]
Category: Pokemon Mystery Dungeon, Pokemon Super Mystery Dungeon
Genre: Angst and Feels, Blood and Gore, Emetophobia, Explicit Language, Female Friendship, Inspired by Music, Mild Gore, One Shot, Other, Short One Shot, Unhealthy Relationships, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-21
Updated: 2020-04-21
Packaged: 2021-03-02 02:20:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,377
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23657479
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hat_Brat/pseuds/Hat_Brat
Summary: “Something always brings me back to you / It never takes too long / No matter what I say or do / I’ll still feel you here, till the moment I’m gone...Set me free, leave me be / I don’t wanna fall another moment into your gravity…”(Or, whump with a toxic player character.)
Relationships: Partner Pokemon & Player Character (Pokemon Mystery Dungeon)
Series: Semper ad Meliora (Always Toward Better Things - a Collection of PMD Stories) [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1703398
Kudos: 5





	Gravity

_“Xochiquetzal, listen to me.”_

_Ia’s back had been receding away from me, and it suddenly stopped. One of her big yellow ears twitched as she turned over her shoulder to stare me down with an icy gaze. “This is serious,” she said. “I need to leave this village. If I don’t, those pokemon that are after me will put all of us in danger. They’ll put_ you _in danger, Xochi. You hear?”_

_I wanted to shrink away, but as usual, I just couldn’t. The fennekin’s poisonous aura was too powerful, making me want to stay even though I knew I shouldn’t._

_I never should’ve given her that Harmony Scarf._

_Why did she take it in the first place?_

_I stared at the ground before me, unable to formulate a response, but knowing what I wanted to express. A vague sensation of “damn this village to hell if need be” and “I’ll follow you to the ends of the earth” and “I hate your fucking guts”._

_Finally, what I managed to come up with was “Then...Then I’ll go with you.”_

_“You_ can’t!” _Ia whirled around with a snarl on her white muzzle. “Arceus, Xochi, do you need to stick to me like some kinda stain all the time? I know what’s right in this situation, so just...Listen to me!”_

_“It’s not you!” I fired back instantly. “If you weren’t here I would be trying to leave anyway! I want to see the wider world. It’s not about you at all!” The sail on my head twitched in anger, growing warm._

_“Then why else,” Ia mumbled, turning back around. “The grownups are right. You have to stay here. The outside world is dangerous. You have a choice, Xochi. I don’t. So don’t throw your life away.”_

_I made a point to thrust my shoulder into hers as I passed by, not looking back. “I’m going with you,” I insisted. “I’m going to go talk to my pops right now.”_

_She didn’t say a word as she watched me go._

* * *

It had taken so much time, but we had done it. 

We’d left in the dead of night. Since then, our journey had been quiet, both because we hadn’t encountered any mystery dungeons and because we barely said a word to one another. 

That was until we _did_ encounter a mystery dungeon in the Sheer Mountain Range the morning after we left. 

Twelve floors in, so far, so good. After traversing down a long, thin stretch of crumbling rocks, we stopped to catch our breaths on a ragged outcrop. Eyeing a very asleep mienshao a few paces away, we stayed on guard. I was a mudkip in a dungeon filled with things I didn’t have a type advantage over. Ia was so cocky she was convinced she could take anything, type advantage or no (although, due to the Type Bulldozer set in her looplet, I had no choice but to accept that she _could.)_

“...How are you holding up?” I murmured to Ia.

“Fine,” she replied briskly. “You?”

“I’m okay. I don’t think we have far to go now, we’ll be out of these mountains soon.”

“That’ll be a relief.”

It was the closest thing to a conversation we’d had for awhile. It was...refreshing.

And then I saw a flash of purple behind Ia.

“Watch out-!”

She was two steps ahead of me, executing a perfect Flame Charge into the drifloon’s round body. My heart sank. _Oh no oh no oh no-!_

Ia had thought too quickly, and an explosion ripped through the air as the drifloon’s ability activated.

Worse, we had an awake and very _angry_ mienshao to deal with.

I took my place at Ia’s side. Physical attacks were a no-go with that thing’s Aftermath to deal with. I turned my attention to the mienshao. It glared down at me. Glaring right back up at it, I sprang off of the ground, Tackling it in the stomach. It barely even recoiled. 

Something smacked me in the back of the head. It was the drifloon with an Astonish. Ia snarled, “Hey, your fight is with me!”

It was now the mienshao’s turn. Cringing from the Astonish, I scrunched up my face, bracing myself for the inevitable hit. And it came so hard.

The wind was knocked out of me as a Force Palm came harshly into my chest, sending me reeling back dangerously close to the edge of the outcrop where my body skidded to a stop. I couldn’t waste time even though I was slammed with pain as my chest cracked every time I moved. I was on my feet again and firing a burst of water from my mouth at the mienshao. Once more, it barely appeared fazed, but it did take a step back. That was a good sign.

There was a resounding click when I stepped forward, and saw a second too late that I had stepped on, of all things, a fucking Blast trap. 

“Xochi-!”

Ia’s form receded away as the explosion blew us apart, fire burning the front of my chest. My hind legs hit the ground and then I tumbled backwards over them, but there was no more ground to catch me. I plummeted headfirst off of the mountain, hearing nothing but Ia screaming my name.

My body smashed into the rocks and I was washed with a hot white fire, an agony so terrible I couldn’t even scream. Bones snapped and my mouth filled with the taste of metal. A small, guttural cry escaped me as I came to a harsh stop, my frail form snapping like a twig. 

I choked and sobbed, aware of nothing but my own blue blood spilling over the sheer cliff. I couldn’t move. Hell, I couldn’t even _think._ My blood was hot on my torn-open skin. The world was fading into nothingness, my heartbeat slow in my ears, and then my limited vision filled with yellow fur.

_Ia._

Ia had thrown herself off of the mountain after me.

Her paws were shredded from skidding down the rocks, and as I laid on the ground I could barely summon up the strength to turn my eyes up to look at her. 

Her tears were dripping onto my face. 

Aghast with horror, Ia gaped down at me. Her blue eyes begged for me to live, to be okay. And then her image blurred, as I finally managed to cry. 

“...Ia…?”

“Don’t talk, Xochi!” Ia snapped out loudly, her tear-streaked face twisting into something not quite angry. “Please, please, please! W-we’ve...We’ve fallen so far, I’m gonna take you back to Serene Village. Hang on!”

She tried to scruff me, to pull me onto her back, but the pain that consumed me once more made my stomach heave uncontrollably, and then I puked all over the rock. While Ia was still slack-jawed with shock, I could only tremble at her feet. If Ia couldn’t even move me without me falling into unconsciousness, if she couldn’t help me, then that meant...

I was going to die here. 

My mouth and nose and eyes burned. Already the pain in my legs and chest was diminishing into a dull buzz. If I fell asleep here, I knew that I most likely wouldn’t ever wake up again, but I hurt _so bad,_ and just dipping out of reality would be so, so easy…

The air was ripped with a loud _pop_ as Ia detonated a signal flare that she’d tossed off of the cliff. I was jolted back into semi-wakefulness. 

“Stay with me,” Ia begged weakly as the sound faded away. “H-help is coming, it _has_ to come, please, just stay awake, Xochi!”

I extended one of my legs, my front right one, the one that hurt the least, to touch one of her bloody paws. My eyes threatened to roll back and drift shut, when she started snarling down at me with a fresh wave of tears. 

“Don’t you dare!” she barked, voice breaking with sobs. “So help me, I will rip your sail off to keep you awake. You are not leaving me. Don’t you fucking dare leave me!”

But I was dying, and I didn’t know if it could be stopped. 

Despite my best efforts, my eyes fluttered shut, and I fell under like a stone tossed into a stormy sea.

* * *

_“...What’s his deal, anyway…”_

_We stopped in front of Ia’s house, my whole body still shaking with the terror of the impending night. The fennekin cocked an eyebrow back at me, searching for an explanation as to why I was so rattled._

_I shrunk under her piercing blue eyes. “I-I_ really _can’t deal with ghosts and scary stories and things…Sneaking into the school...You’d have to be crazy!”_

_Was Ia suppressing a laugh?_

_I continued talking, trying not to focus on it. “Ia, you’re not afraid of anything...Will you let me stick by you tonight? I-I dunno, you just make me feel brave -”_

_“Ha, don’t think I will.”_

_“Wh-what?!”_

_Ia started easily scratching at one of her large ears, as if the response was obvious. “You can’t be a baby forever,” she reasoned. “Grow up a little. All that fear’s in your head. So no. In fact, I might just make you walk to school by yourself tonight.” Maybe it was a joke, judging by that cheeky little wink she gave me, but it still hit me like a genuine declination, and I felt my knees buckle beneath me. Her eyes went wide in surprise._

_“Y-Yikes, Xochi, what’s with that face?” Ia laughed uncomfortably. “All I said was to grow up a little…”_

_“Ia?”_

_She’d been walking down the hill, having scarcely taken a few steps when I stopped her._

_I smiled at her over my shoulder, turning around to face her. “That story about you being a human. Well...I believe you.”_

_She tipped her head quizzically. “I know what it’s like,” I continued. “To have nobody take you seriously, I mean. It gets real lonely, huh? So, why don’t we just start by believing in each other? One person could make such a huge difference…”_

_I turned my head up to the starry night sky, smiling blissfully and closing my eyes, imagining the possibilities. “And then we just need to make another friend, and another, and soon we’ll have more friends than we can count! Like all those stars up there.” Ia’s eyes were filled with something I couldn’t quite place when I looked back at her. “So please, be my friend. I mean - uh, I hope we can be friends!” I hopped to my feet, bowing my head. “Please! I promise to stand by you! Let’s stay together!”_

_Ia was silent._

_The hope in my heart began to fizzle out, and I slowly brought my head up with a blooming disappointment. Ia appeared to be deep in thought, looking just past me over the village below. She raised one eyebrow, a small smile worming onto her muzzle, and shook her head._

_“So forward,” she sighed. “Why, with how blunt you are, and annoying, might I add, I have every right to say no right now.”_

_“Wha-?!”_

_“I did_ not _just refuse you.” She shrugged her shoulders. “Eh. Why not. You’re right, after all.”_

That’s... _I thought to myself,_ her way of accepting?

_And then I was blessed with the rarest of sights: a genuine smile on Ia’s face. It made the deepest part of me feel warm, made me forget all the scathing words and gazes that made a Sheer Cold seem blistering in comparison._

_“We’ll be friends,” she said. “Best friends.”_

* * *

What I remember most about the night Ia and I became friends was not her warm smile, or the matching bows on our necks, but the regret I felt once we’d parted for the night. I didn’t want anything more than I wanted Ia by my side, but at the same time, I knew she wasn’t good for me in any way, shape or form. Ia was like a black hole, an endless well of inescapability that drew me in and held me there, tearing me to shreds no matter how much I needed to leave. No matter how much I wanted to.

Hovering on the border between awake and asleep - or perhaps life and death - I could hear her. I could hear her sob, and I could hear her beg me to be alright. I heard doctors saying my legs would never be the same if I lived, and that there wasn’t even a good chance of that. I wasn’t getting any sensory input aside from that, and I’d never been so lonely.

So in want of that black hole that was tearing me apart. 

There was a day when Ia was finally able to see me without bawling her eyes out. I wanted to ask where we were. Serene Village? Lively Town? Somewhere else entirely? No voice I’d heard aside from her was familiar. 

_Ia, I’m scared. What’s going to happen?_

“Hey,” Ia rapsed weakly, perhaps nosing at my unmoving form. “Xochi...Damn it...I shoulda gone after you sooner, I-I…” She paused, collecting herself, clearing her throat. “...No. I’m not here for that. I needed to be with you. Can you hear me?”

_Yes! Ia, I’m right here!_

“I just want you to know,” her voice sounded, quaking, “that, with every last shred of my fucked up, piece of shit heart, I love you. Please come back to me. I treated you so bad for so long, let me say sorry!”

Her voice grew ever fainter as I slipped into cold sleep. I fought to remain, to hear her words, my only solace while so achingly lonely. 

“I’m...be better...I promise...Xochi...please...up…”

Fewer and fewer words got through to me.

If I’d been corporeal in that moment, I would’ve smiled. 

To be better. Ia was going to try. Maybe we’d have a shot at being really happy together.

How long would it take her, I wondered? Not long? All of her life?

It didn’t really matter to me anymore. Her willingness to try made me feel so, so happy.

No longer afraid, I finally could let go, slipping into a neverending blackness.


End file.
